Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, Chained on the burning lake." He, above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent, Stood like a tower: his form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen Looks through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs: darkened so, yet shone Above them all the Archangel." "As when far off at sea a fleet descried Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds Close sailing from Bengala or the isles Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole: seemed Far off the flying fiend." "On the other side, Satan, alarmed, Collecting all his might, dilated stood," Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved: His stature reached the sky, and on his crest so 38. The Ottimo and Benvenuto both interpret the three faces as symbolizing Ignorance, Hatred, and Impotence. Others interpret them as signifying the three quarters of the then known world, Europe, Asia, and Africa. 45. Æthiopia; the region about the Cataracts of the Nile. 48. Milton, Parad. Lost, II. 527: " At last his sail-broad vans He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke Uplifted spurns the ground." papale, I. 75, Miss Ward's Tr., says: The three spirits, who hang from the mouths of his Satan, are Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. The poet's reason for selecting those names has never yet been satisfactorily accounted for; but we have no hesitation in pronouncing it to have been this, he considered the Pope not only a betrayer and seller of Christ,-'Where gainful merchandise is made of Christ throughout the livelong day,' (Parad. 17,) and for that reason put Judas into his centre mouth; but a traitor and rebel to Cæsar, and therefore placed Brutus and Cassius in the other two mouths; for the Pope, who was originally no more than Cæsar's vicar, became his enemy, and usurped the capital of his empire, and the supreme authority. His treason to Christ was not discovered by the world in general; hence the face of Judas is hidden, -' He that hath his head within, and plies the feet without' (Inf. 34); his treason tc Cæsar was open and manifest, therefore Brutus and Cassius show their faces." He adds in a note: "The situation of Judas is the same as that of the Popes who were guilty of simony.' 68. The evening of Holy Saturday. 77. Iliad, V. 305: "With this he struck the hip of Aneas, where the thigh turns on the hip." 95. The canonical day, from sunrise to sunset, was divided into four equal parts, called in Italian Terza, Sesta, Nona, and Vespro, and varying in length hours," says Dante, Convito, III. 6, with the change of season. "These are short or long.. according as day and night increase or diminish." Terza was the first division after sunrise; and at the equinox would be from six Consequently mezza terza, tierce, would be half-past 114. Jerusalem. 55. Landor in his Pentameron, 527, makes Petrarca say: "This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is grand by his lights, not by his shadows; till nine. by his human affections, not by his in- or middle fernal. As the minutest sands are the seven. labours of some profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a turbu lent spirit, grasping the loftiest things, and penetrating the deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and sadness. 62. Gabriele Rossetti, Spirito Anti 125. The Mountain of Purgatory, rising out of the sea at a point directly opposite Jerusalem, upon the other side of the globe. It is an island in the South Pacific Ocean. 130. This brooklet is Lethe, whose source is on the summit of the Mountain of Purgatory, flowing down to mingle with Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon, the stars;' at the end of the Purgatorio and form Cocytus. See Canto XIV. he is “ ready to ascend to the stars;" at the end of the Paradiso he feels the power of "that Love which moves the sun and other stars." He is now looking upon the morning stars of Easter 136. ILLUSTRATIONS. L'OTTIMO COMENTO. Inferno, X. 85. I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say in his rhymes what they were not wont to express for other poets. VILLANI'S NOTICE OF DANTE. Cronica, Lib. IX cap. 136. Tr. in Napier's Florentine History, Book I. ch. 16. In the month of July, 1321, died the Poet Dante Alighieri of Florence, in the city of Ravenna in Romagna, after his return from an embassy to Venice for the Lords of Polenta with whom he resided; and in Ravenna before the door of the principal church he was interred with high honour, in the habit of a poet and great philosopher. He died in banishment from the community of Florence, at the age of about fifty-six. This Dante was an honourable and ancient citizen of Porta San Piero at Florence, and our neighbour; and his exile from Florence was on the occasion of Charles of Valois, of the house of France, coming to Florence in 1301, and the expulsion of the White party, as has already in its place been mentioned. The said Dante was of the supreme governors of our city, and of that party although a Guelf; and therefore without any other crime was with the said White party expelled and banished from Florence; and he went to the University of Bologna, and into many parts of the world. This was a great and learned person in almost every science, although a layman; he was a consummate poet and philosopher, and rhetorician; as And perfect in prose and verse as he was in public speaking a most noble orator; in rhyming excellent, with the most polished and beautiful style that ever appeared in our language up to this time or since. He wrote in his youth the book of The Early Life of Love, and afterwards when in exile made twenty moral and amorous canzonets very excellent, and amongst other things three noble epistles: one he sent to the Florentine Government, complaining of his undeserved exile; another to the Emperor Henry when he was at the siege of Brescia, reprehending him for his delay, and almost prophesying; the third to the Italian cardinals during the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement, urging them to agree in electing an Italian Pope; all in Latin, with noble precepts and excellent sentences and authorities, which were much commended by the wise and learned. he wrote the Commedia, where, in polished verse and with great and subtile arguments, moral, natural, astrological, philosophical, and theological, with new and beautiful figures, similes, and poetical graces, he composed and treated in a hundred chapters or cantos of the existence of hell, purgatory, and paradise; so loftily as may be said of it, that whoever is of subtile intellect may by his said treatise perceive and understand. was well pleased in this poem to blame and cry out, in the manner of poets, in some places perhaps more than he ought to have done; but it may be that his exile made him do so. He also wrote the Monarchia, where he treats of the office of popes and emperors. And he began a comment on fourteen of the above-named moral canzonets in the vulgar tongue, which in consequence of his death is found imperfect except on three, which, to judge from what is seen, Не would have proved a lofty, beautiful, when he had given me the book, I subtile, and most important work; be pressed it gratefully to my bosom, and in cause it is equally ornamented with noble his presence fixed my eyes upon it with opinions and fine philosophical and astro- great love. But I beholding there the logical reasoning. Besides these he com- vulgar tongue, and showing by the fashion posed a little book which he entitled De of my countenance my wonderment thereVulgari Eloquentia, of which he pro- at, he asked the reason of the same. I mised to make four books, but only two answered, that I marvelled he should are to be found, perhaps in consequence sing in that language; for it seemed a of his early death; where, in powerful difficult thing, nay, incredible, that those and elegant Latin and good reasoning, most high conceptions could be expressed he rejects all the vulgar tongues of Italy. in common language; nor did it seem to This Dante, from his knowledge, was me right that such and so worthy a scisomewhat presumptuous, harsh, and dis-ence should be clothed in such plebeian dainful, like an ungracious philosopher; garments. "You think aright," he said,' he scarcely deigned to converse with lay- and I myself have thought so. And men; but for his other virtues, science, when at first the seeds of these matters, and worth as a citizen, it seems but perhaps inspired by Heaven, began to reasonable to give him perpetual re- bud, I chose that language which was membrance in this our chronicle; never- most worthy of them and not alone theless, his noble works, left to us in chose it, but began forthwith to poetize writing, bear true testimony of him, and therein, after this wise : honourable fame to our city. LETTER OF FRATE ILARIO. Hither he came, passing through the diocese of Luni, moved either by the religion of the place, or by some other feeling. And seeing him, as yet unknown to me and to all my brethren, I questioned him of his wishings and his seekings there. He moved not; but stood silently contemplating the columns and arches of the cloister. And again I asked him what he wished, and whom he sought. Then, slowly turning his head, and looking at the friars and at me, he answered "Peace!" Thence kindling more and more the wish to know him and who he might be, I led him aside somewhat, and, having spoken a few words with him, I knew him; for although I had never seen him till that hour, his fame had long since reached me. And when he saw that I hung upon his countenance, and listened to him with strange affection, he drew from his bosom a book, did gently open it, and offered it to me, saying: "Sir Friar, here is a portion of my work, which peradventure thou hast not seen. This remembrance I leave with thee. Forget me not." And 66 'Ultima regna canam fluido contermina mundo, Spiritibus quæ lata patent; quæ præmia sol vunt Pro meritis cuicumque suis.' But when I recalled the condition of the present age, and saw the songs of the illustrious poets esteemed almost as naught, and knew that the generous men, for whom in better days these things were written, had abandoned, ah me! the liberal arts unto vulgar hands, I threw aside the delicate lyre, which had armed my flank, and attuned another more befitting the ear of moderns ;--for the food that is hard we hold in vain to the mouths of sucklings." Having said this, he added with emotion, that if the occasion served, I should make some brief annotations upon the work, and, thus apparailed, should forward it to you. Which task in truth, although I may not have extracted all the marrow of his words, I have neverthe less performed with fidelity; and the work required of me I frankly send you, as was enjoined upon me by that most friendly man; in which work, if it appear that any ambiguity still remains, you must impute it to my insufficiency, for there is no doubt that the text is per fect in all points. certain sum of money, and submit to PASSAGE FROM THE CONVITO, the humiliation of asking and receiving I. iii. Leigh Hunt, Stories from the Italian Poets, p. 12. Ah! would it had pleased the Dispenser of all things that this excuse had never been needed; that neither others had done me wrong, nor myself undergone penalty undeservedly, - the penalty, I say, of exile and of poverty. For it pleased the citizens of the fairest and most renowned daughter of Rome-Florence to cast me out of her most sweet bosom, where I was born, and bred, and passed half of the life of man, and in which, with her good leave, I still desire absolution: wherein, my father, I see two propositions that are ridiculous and impertinent. I speak of the impertinence of those who mention such conditions to me; for in your letter, dictated by judgment and discretion, there is no such thing. Is such an invitation, then, to return to his country glorious to Dante Alighieri, after suffering in exile almost fifteen years? Is it which all the world knows, and the thus they would recompense innocence labour and fatigue of unremitting study? Far from the man who is familiar with philosophy be the senseless baseness of return with all my heart to repose my weary a heart of earth, that could act like a spirit, and finish the days allotted me; little sciolist, and imitate the infamy of and so I have wandered in almost every some others, by offering himself up as place to which our language extends, a it were in chains: far from the man stranger, almost a beggar, exposing who cries aloud for justice, this comagainst my will the wounds given me by fortune, too often unjustly imputed to the sufferer's fault. Truly I have been a vessel without sail and without rudder, driven about upon different ports and shores by the dry wind that springs out of dolorous poverty; and hence have I appeared vile in the eyes of many, who, perhaps, by some better report had conceived of me a different impression, and in whose sight not only has my person become thus debased, but an unworthy opinion created of everything which I did, or which I had to do. DANTE'S LETTER TO A Leigh Hunt, Stories from the Italian Poets, p. 13. Promise by his money with his perse- PORTRAITS OF DANTE. By Charles E. Norton. In his Life of Dante, Boccaccio, the earliest of the biographers of the poet, describes him in these words: "Our poet was of middle height, and after reaching mature years he went somewhat stooping; his gait was grave and sedate; always clothed in most becoming garments, his dress was suited to the ripeness of his years; his face was long, his nose aquiline, his eyes rather large than small, his jaw heavy, and his |